User blog:L1242092/Bucko Guard vs. Riley Guard
Bucko Guard and Riley Guard are currently the most expensive items in the game (not including Ticket eggs or increased costs on Basic Eggs or Hive Slots). Given their extraordinary costs, when you finally get the Honey necessary to buy one, the obvious question arises: which one do you buy? I will attempt to answer that question here. Edit 10/28/2018: Since this blog was written, several other items have been added that are more expensive than these guards. Still, the rest of this guide holds true as an analysis of which between Bucko Guard and Riley Guard should first be purchased, as well as a warning to never buy the Elite guards. Additional boosts have also been added to the game since then, but their effect is not likely strong enough for those deciding which guard to buy to impact their decision. Stats To make any judgment, we need to consider the stats of each guard. In order to make another point, I will compare the performance of all Blue and Red guards. Elite Guards Something you should be thinking about when buying upgrades is what you get for what you spend. The Blue Guard and Red Guard are both good investments, I feel, because their cost is relatively cheap for what they do. To make up their cost, you only need to collect 10 million Blue or Red pollen respectively. However, if your goal is to eventually own the Bucko or Riley guards, then the Elite versions of each of these guards are not worth buying. * If you go for the top end guard immediately, it will cost you 60 million pollen. * If you skip the basic guard and just buy the Elite version, you will need to collect 8 million pollen for the elite guard plus 52.174 million colored pollen only at the rate before wearing the elite guard to afford the top end guard, totaling 60.174 million pollen with all but 8 million matching the guard's color. While it might seem that the extra 174k may not be a stretch and indeed worth it for the guard's other benefits, that assumes you spend that entire time after buying the elite guard farming pollen of that color. That loss in versatility should make it not worthwhile, and if you do spend any considerable amount of time outside of collecting that color pollen, it will certainly not be worth it. * The worst you can do is buy the basic and elite guard. Using the +10% given by the basic guard as a base, the increase from the elite guard only ends up being about +4.5% to that color of pollen. Assuming you collect nothing but the color of pollen matching the guard after buying the basic version, using the rate of collection with no guard, you will need to collect 1 + 7.272 (8 at +10%) + 52.174 (60 at +15%) = 60.447 million pollen with all but 1 million matching the guard's color. * Finally, if you buy the basic guard, skip the elite guard, and just get the top end guard, then as long as you collect at least 10 million pollen of that color at the pre-guard rate, you can do no worse than buying the top end guard from scratch. If, for some reason, you decide to collect only pollen of that color, you can buy the top end guard after farming 1 + 54.545 (60 at +10%) = 55.545 million pollen at the pre-guard rate. Conclusion Don't buy the Elite Blue or Red Guards ever. They are merely a waste of honey. The basic guards are pretty good though, so buy those when you can. I won't do any kind of mathematical comparison to any Pro Shop guards, but I think the +% pollen boosts from each guard are better than anything available in that shop. Bucko vs. Riley Guard Assuming that you do have 60 million honey lying around, which guard do you buy? Both of them increase container space and reduce damage by the same amount. Each of them increase yield from a different color of flower. While this may be negligible to most people or might be conditional based on what fields you most often feel like farming or what your swarm is built around, fence sitters can look at badges and quests to get an idea of whether one color comes out on top. As far as quests go, Black Bear is pretty balanced in the colors he demands. Science Bear ends currently on a quest that demands a lot of red. These bears may not be that relevant though as someone who has farmed up 60 million Honey may have already completed these quests. When it comes to Polar Bear, there are seven quests that favor gathering from red fields versus blue fields and four quests that are the opposite. However, across the 18 quests, a total of 910 million pollen from red fields and 970 million pollen from blue fields is demanded, suggesting that over a long period of time, more blue pollen will be in demand. As far as badges go, there is a tendency for players to deviate towards red fields at the higher end. The last thing to consider are the major differences between the two pieces - the +15% Instant Conversion and +50% Crit Power of the Bucko Guard versus the +10% Crit Chance and +150% Conversion Rate of the Riley Guard. The mentality to approach comparing these differences is to ask which of these sets of bonuses will actually improve the rate of production, either in gathering or converting pollen. Gathering Comparing the gathering ability of the guards means examining their Crit boosts. Here are two tables to show the average change to pollen gathering between the two guards under different levels of Focus and Melody. These are assuming no Belt and no Battle Badge, thus the base Crit Chance is 0% and Crit Power is +100%. This shows that the only circumstance where the Bucko Guard is better than the Riley Guard (in this category) is when you have many stacks of Focus with no Melody. Otherwise, Riley Guard is better on average. Other sources of Critical Chance, such as belts, improve things in Bucko's favor. Sources of Critical Power, such as the Battle Badge boosts, improve things in Riley's favor. Conversion Comparing the gathering ability of the guards means examining their conversion boosts. This is a more nuanced comparison than the Crit numbers. The boost of the Riley Guard is rather straightforward, simply improving Conversion Rate by +150%. This stacks with Science Enhancement and belt boosts and is multiplied by the Honey Badge boost. Instant Conversion is a little more tricky. It stacks with the boost from the Beekeeper's Mask, which I will assume anyone going for these top end guards will already have. The relative boost from the Bucko Guard is therefore to convert 20% (15/(100-25) = .20) of pollen gathered into Honey. It also stacks with the boost from the Dandelion Badge, which I will assume for now is no greater than 10%, which would bring the relative boost up to ~23% (15/(100-35) = .2308). Instant Conversion is like, but slightly better than, extra container space. The space increase can be found by inverting the fraction of remaining pollen. For example, if you had Instant Conversion of 25%, you would be able to gather (75/100)-1 = 100/75 = 4/3 of your container's size in pollen. To put another way, if you had a container size of 300k, you would be able to gather 400k pollen before having to return to the hive - 100k of that pollen would be instantly converted and the remaining 300k would fill the container. The slight improvement is that once you return to the hive, you only have to convert the 300k in your container rather than the full 400k you gathered. In a similar way, you can look at Instant Conversion as also being an improved form of Conversion Rate as it also cuts down on the amount of time your swarm needs to convert the pollen in your container, but additionally cuts down on how often you need to return to the hive to convert a full container. In this case, with a Beekeeper's Mask, the Bucko Guard's relative ~23% boost in Instant Conversion equates to something better than a x1.3% Conversion Rate multiplier that stacks additively with the Honey Badge multiplier. If you have the current maximum of 16 stacks of Science Enhancement, your Conversion Rate would be 500%, meaning the Bucko Guard would be something better than +150% Conversion Rate, definitively better than the boost provided by the Riley Guard. Throw the Belt Bag or Mondo Belt on top and you're looking at >+165% and >+180% respectively. But, what if you also have boosts from the Honey Badges? If you're able to afford both the Beekeeper's Mask and a top end guard, you are probably past if not very close to earning the x1.75 Conversion Rate multiplier from the Honey Ace badge. This multiplier makes the Riley Guard worth +262.5% Conversion Rate, which is well more than the additive improvement of the Bucko Guard on a conversion rate that currently maxes out at 600%. Conclusion After taking into account all of the numbers, it seems that the current winner is the Riley Guard. Riley Guard does more for most people both in boosting gathering and conversion. The largest advantage Bucko Guard has over Riley Guard is the demand for more blue pollen in Polar Bear quests, but the difference is negligible compared to the advantages of Riley Guard in other areas. It is likely that other people have looked at the two and come to the same conclusion, as reflected by the badge trends by top collectors. Future changes to the game may change which one of these is on top. Tipping the balance into Bucko's favor would require the addition of other ways to boost Critical Chance or additional additive sources of Conversion Rate to aid Bucko's indirect multiplier to the stat. For now, when you have 60 million Honey to spend on a guard, make your way over to Red HQ and pick up a Riley Guard first. Category:Blog posts